There have been circulated hardcoat films each including a substrate (base) and, on one or both sides of the substrate, a hardcoat layer having a surface pencil hardness of about 3 H. The hardcoat layers in the hardcoat films are formed from materials selected mainly from UV-curable acrylic monomers (see, for example, Patent Literature (PTL) 1). For higher surface hardness of the hardcoat layers, some hardcoat layers further include nanoparticles.
In contrast, glass is known as a material having extremely high surface hardness. Among such glass, there is known glass that has been subjected to an alkali ion exchange treatment and has a higher surface pencil hardness of up to 9 H. Such glass, however, has poor flexibility and workability, is to be produced and processed not by a roll-to-roll process, but by a sheet-to-sheet process. This leads to high production cost.